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Monday, March 31, 2014

Final Point 7

Essay: We added more editions to compare and contrast with our own edition, but we kept the Pelican edition as our main point of reference.

In the Introduction, I made the writing not less colloquial but more crisp, as directed. I also took out the authorship question and just focused on Shakespeare himself.

We are working on the inclusion of Act I scenes 1-3 and the annotations and edits of the entire act.

The history section was reorganized so that it is easier to understand and has a better framework. The peer review helped to point out the weaknesses of the essay. There are stronger topic sentences and flows much more coherently and smoothly. I also added some questions at the end to prompt the student reader to make connections to Shakespeare’s motives, our cultural times, and their own personal situations.

In the Gender section of the end matter, I took the advice from the peer review and focused more on the issue of gender in regards to both Macbeth and his wife rather than just Lady Macbeth. I also made the text a bit more formal, while still attempting to maintain a conversation that would be easy for high schoolers to understand. I added textual evidence as well to support the claims made in the section.

In the Power and Politics section, I went through and clarified many of the sentences the peer review group had confusion about (this includes removing many unneeded thats and being more direct with my statements. I made sure the topic sentence was more accessible and the overall message remained consistent. I added more examples to make the topic clearer and more understandable, such as adding a more thorough comparison between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and Adam and Eve.

In the Staging and Adaptations section, I made sure to correct what I wrote as the Chinese version to Japanese. I also edited my writing and made sure it continued to have nice flow while being read.

I would just like to start by saying that I love your graphic! I think it's a brilliant idea to include in a high school edition of this play! One note though: Should it be Husband/Wife & Son for the line between Macduff and Lady Macduff? Instead of husband/wife/son?

The annotations:LOVE that they are side by side. Makes it way more likely that the students will actually look at the reference because they are so accessible. Also, I like that you reference the back matter, shows that it's important and relevant.

At some spots the annotations don't exactly line up like on pg 16 of the google doc- hermits, coursed-holp.

Also, it might be nice to have more distinction between the annotations that are close together, it would make it cleaner I think. Line separation?

pg 19 of the google doc: While I find it terribly funny that you use the phrase "flat-out crazy" I don't feel that it's appropriate for this edition.

I thought that this prototype was very well-polished. I can tell that you have gone through it several times and cleaned it up. I really like the clear organization and overall style. I especially enjoyed the font choice. It might seem like a little thing, but I feel that it has a big impact on the accessibility of the supplementary material as a whole.

One thing that I noticed was that you state in your essay that one of the things that you want to do with your edition is to let the students stretch themselves a little bit by accessing more supplementary material (something that you claim is missing from many high school editions of Shakespeare's plays). I think this is a great idea, but it seems that you undercut that argument a bit by essentially coddling the students through a very informal and almost unprofessional tone within the Gender section. I feel that you find a good balance in some of the other sections (I loved the Introduction--specifically the changes that you made between this and previous versions in your earlier prototype). I wonder if you could make the voice in these supplementary materials a little more unified, though I know that this can be difficult when working with a team of writers.

As far as the content itself, I thought you gave a really good range of information that would really help out high school students to get to know Shakespeare and the background for this play.

Also, to echo my fellow reviewer above, I love the graphic that you included to show the different characters. Well done!

Gotta start with those annotations. That really is the best way to do it, and I may fight my own group about switching over to this format--especially for your kind of edition, it's terrific and makes the information super accessible.

Reading over your essay, it sounds solid. One thought however may be to look at your topic sentences and give them a little more punch--as in don't begin paragraphs with any kind of vague statements.

Love the character map. This is a brilliant idea and I wish I'd had something like this while reading Macbeth. Super props.

I'd go through and universalize your fonts and give it a nice professional polishing before calling it finished--for example, the annotations could line up better in places.